In this sermon, the preacher discusses the importance of vision and obedience to God's will. He emphasizes the need for a cleansing wave of revival in a nation plagued by immorality and sin. The preacher highlights the extreme holiness of God and the contrast with the sinful state of society. He uses the example of a man lying on his left side, symbolizing his dedication to God's will, even if it means being seen as foolish by others. The preacher calls for individuals to be shut up to God and to prioritize obedience to Him above worldly recognition or success.

Father, we thank you tonight that while you are the high and lofty one who inhabited eternity, in majesty incomprehensible to us, yet we bless you that you, through the miracle of your Son Jesus Christ, come descend to dwell in humble and contrite hearts. We thank you that you veiled your majesty in flesh. Concerning Jesus, Wesley said, Mild he laid his glory by, born that man no more may die. Born to raise the Son. Lord, maybe there's not one person here that isn't acquainted with the gospel tonight. But they still may be unacquainted. Maybe they've witnessed blessing, but never shared a meeting in which there's been a divine invasion. We welcome you tonight, Holy Spirit of God. We bless you for this indestructible, infallible, inerrant book. You banished it, and yet it stands at the graveside of us. Because you have said that your word, that heaven and earth may pass away, but your word will never pass away. We thank you for one more privilege to bow in your presence. One more opportunity to hear your voice. And truly we say with another point tonight, beyond the sacred page we seek thee, Lord. We ask that we may lose sight of the preacher, lose sight of each other. Lord, we ask you that somehow you'll transfer us into eternity tonight. We're so earthbound. We're so conscious of visible things. And so unconscious of the invisible. Again, so conscious of the temple, and so unconscious of the eternal. Do some miracle in our hearts tonight. Let nobody leave this place as they came in. Make every one of us to have an encounter with God. Again, we thank you for this word, and we turn to it with expectation, and pray the Spirit to inspire the holy men of God, who were moved by the Holy Ghost, that we may be moved by that same. I want to read a scripture from the, or if you're English, Isaiah. So either way, it's chapter 6 of Isaiah. Reading from verse 1. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon the throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood a set of hymns, each one had six rings. With train, or with two, he covered his face. With train did he cover his feet, and with train did he fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. Of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. And the pulse of the door moved, and the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, always me, for I am undone. Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then threw one of the seraphims unto me, having a life coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongues from off the altar. And he said, Lo, this has touched thy lips. Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, here am I, send me. And he said, Go. The title for this message tonight will be Vision, or more correctly, a Threefold Vision. The chapter, in my opinion, is self-dividing, at least up to the part where I've read. Three simple definitions. So simple you could remember them if you're a Ph.D. In verse 5, the word, Woe. In verse 7, the word, Lo. Second is the word of a seraphim, and the third is the word of God. Touch thy lips. The third is the word of commission, Go. In the very first verse we have a timetable, if you like. In the year that King Uzziah died. Uzziah was one of the most marvelous kings that Israel ever had. For a minute, let's skip back over to the second book of Chronicles, chapter 26. We have a summary here of the achievements of this young man. He took over a kingdom at 16 years of age, remember, as it says in verse 1. In this 16th chapter, we have a record of all his dazzling achievements. Chapter 26, verse 1, Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was 16 years old, and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah. Verse 3 says, 16 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 50 and 2 years. Therefore he died at 68 years of age. It says of him here in verse 5, And he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding of visions. And as long as he sought the Lord, he was made to prosper. Verse 6 says, He went forth and he slew the Philistines. Then it tells you a list of the enemies that he subdued. He liberated his nation. He took over. Let me check, can you hear properly, because I can't hear myself. You can hear alright. My English is bad, but you'll get used to it. He subdued his enemies. He managed to revive the whole economy. He built the greatest army that they'd ever had. He invented new machines of war, which were those huge catapults that threw great rocks on the wooden buildings and so forth of the enemy. And his record is one of continual triumph. You could change the figure and say he was like King Midas. Everything that he did turned to gold. He subdued all his enemies. He changed the heart of the nation. He changed the heart of the economy. Again he built up the greatest army they had ever had. And while he sought the Lord he was made to prosper. But you know there were more people failing in prosperity than in adversity. It's a very difficult thing to handle prosperity. In verse 15 he says he made Jerusalem, in Jerusalem, engines. He invented cunning men to throw, and he built towers. And they threw great stones. And at the end of the verse he says he was marvelously held till he was strong. But when he became strong his heart was lifted up in vanity to destruction. And he transgressed against the Lord. You see he ran the government, he ran the economy, he ran agriculture. He was a big shot, he was the big chief in everything. So he decided to take over the religious side of the nation. And though he knew it was a violation of God's law, which would incur a penalty of death, he still tried it. You read a little further down in this chapter here. It says in verse 17 that Azariah the priest went in after him with four score priests of the Lord that were valiant men. So you have 81 men trying to keep one man from getting there to commit suicide in the sanctuary. But he fought against them all. No man could hold him down. We're reading now, just finishing off anyhow, the second book of Chronicles chapter 26. And at verse 17, Azariah the priest went after him with four score priests of the Lord who were valiant men, they were strong men. And they withstood Uzziah. But verse 16 says Uzziah was wrath. He had a censer in his hand which he was not allowed to have. And thought he could minister by virtue of being a king. He believed in the divine right of kings. Now remember he's a 16 year old youngster that's taken the economy, he's revised it, he's raised armies, he's had inventions. He has a supernatural touch from God and yet he wastes it. Then Uzziah was wrath, verse 19. And he had a censer in his hand to burn incense. And while he was wrath with the priest, the leprosy rose over him. Verse 21 says, And Uzziah the king was a leper until he died. Until, he was a leper, until the day of his death. And dwelt in a zebra house, or a leper house. For he was cut off from the house of the Lord. And eventually he died. Go back now to Isaiah 6 which is our chapter. Remember the five simple words, the simple words in verses 5, 7 and 9. Verse 5, the word law, woe. Verse 7, the word law. And in verse 9, the word go. A word of confession, a word of cleansing, a word of commission. The word of a man, the word of a seraphim, the word of God. Now this man has this threefold vision. Listen, let me tell you what it says here very clearly. In the year that King Uzziah died. Somebody will die in this meeting tonight. Not physically. This is God's last call to you. He's been after you for years. You heard your prayers of your godly mother or father. Time and again he's thrown a roadblock and you resisted. Like this man resisted 81 men that were standing in his way. He has a vision of God. A vision of heights because he saw God high and lifted up. A vision of depth because he saw into his own nature. A vision of breadth because he saw lost world. He saw a vision of beauty because he saw God. He had a vision of depravity because he saw in his own nature. He had a vision of duty because he saw lost world. When he saw the Lord high and lifted up. It was a vision of holiness. The cherubim were not singing. And this is the only place in the Bible, remember, where cherubim are mentioned. They're a seraphim, but not cherubim. Excuse me a minute. He sees God holy. And he sees from the vision of holiness into his own being. The vision of hellishness. He sees a lost world. The vision of hopelessness. Again a vision of deity, an inward vision of depravity, an outward vision of duty. The Lord is high and lifted up. And his strength filled the temple. And the cherubim were not singing or the holy beings were not singing about the attributes of God. They were not singing about his omniscience or his omnipresence or his omnipotence. They were singing about his character. How many people do you think have staggered out of churches in America or England today, overwhelmed with the holiness of God? We've lost sight of God's holiness. And because we've lost sight of God's holiness, we've lost sight of hellishness. We've lost sight of sin. This man has the most revolutionary vision, I think, in the whole of the Word of God. He has a vision of God, a vision of majesty. He has an inward vision of mystery. And he has an outward vision of misery. Where there is no vision, the Word of God says the people perish. A young man named Gilmore went to Mongolia, in that frozen country, and he labored there for seven years without seeing one convert. Why did he go? Because he had a vision. In the late 1890s in England, there was a young man who was called the most eligible, desirable bachelor ever in the nation. He was a brilliant scholar at Oxford. He was only 21 years of age. He won the senior prize, the Smith Prize, that had never been won by anybody at that age. He was a senior wrangler in the university. He was gifted beyond most men. Everybody said he was going to have a political career. He may become the Prime Minister of England. He may become the leading scientist. And one day Jesus Christ laid hold of his life. What did he do? He went to India. What did he do in India? He lived for seven years and he died. What did he do in the seven years? He took the original Greek and translated it into one of the most difficult languages. In fact, he translated it from Greek, directly from Greek, into Arabic, a more difficult language. He settled down and he took another spell of study. And he translated scriptures into a number of languages there. Only seven years there, but he left his mark on the nation to this very day. What did he do? He had a vision of the lostness of men. I remind you again, it was an upward vision. He saw the Lord. It was an inward vision. He saw himself. It was an outward vision. He saw the lost world. You know, this meeting can settle down to mediocrity. You just listen to somebody with a little different voice. Or you can say, Lord, speak to me. There's a world outside. There are more lost people in the world tonight than at any given point in history. You listen to one of those stupid men on TV. They say, send us money. TV is God's new agent to send the gospel into countries where they can't even afford a pair of shoes. To send the gospel up the Amazon where people are still savages. Maybe not two people here tonight have prayed for Afghanistan, one of the neediest countries in the world. But you see, we don't have much capital interest there, and therefore Afghanistan has gone out of our reckoning. China now has a thousand million, no, it has 900 million people, the largest population in the world. India has 800 million people. It has 400 languages or dialects. And here are these countries without God and without hope. And they've got to be without God and without hope unless there's a revolution in our hearts, in our thinking, in our understanding. The last vision is a vision of a lost world. And I believe we're responsible for, I believe that this generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of heathens. Not just to send mysteries, but to go and be mysteries. And invest our lives in some of the most difficult things it's possible for a man to undertake as a human being. You know, when you talk about vision, people get a bit suspicious. You hear people say, now be very careful, you know. It's all right to be spiritual, but don't be too spiritual. Nobody ever says get money, but don't be too rich. Nobody ever says get educated, but don't be too wise. You could be, you're in trouble if you have vision only. Sure, if you have vision, you'll be a visionary. A vision without a task makes a visionary. A task without a vision is grudgingly. A task wedded to a vision makes a missionary. Oh, we have these pretty little phrases in our churches. I've heard them in Australia, other countries, you know. People say now, let me warn you a minute, you know. You can be so heavenly minded you know earthly use. Isn't that wonderful? You think Shakespeare said it. You can be so heavenly minded you know earthly use. Well listen, I'm going to protest and tell you tonight that my generation is not so heavenly minded, it's no earthly use. It's so earthly minded, it's no heavenly use. The church is earthbound, materialistic. We live like the world, talk like the world, dress like the world, think like the world. We're as interested in sports as the world is. Some of the kids couldn't find this passage of Scripture, but they'll tell you the baseball scores right now, who's knocking the most home runs and who's doing this, that and the other. We're saturated in holiness. We want to be holy on Sundays and calm on Mondays. We want to try and persuade God how tall we stand in the spiritual life, but God isn't interested. No, this is a vision that comes to a man. There's nothing more disturbing. He doesn't really see as he sees in chapter one. You remember about the nation, he says in chapter one, my whole nation is sick, it's full of wounds and putrefying sores, it's full of corruption, there's no healing for it. Again, he's in the most extreme category of men the world has ever had, and they're not men who walk on the moon. They're not men who invent diabolical things to barbecue a nation. Aren't we wonderfully educated now? You know, if you'll be around here a hundred years ago, going down the road, ooh, you pull an arrow out of your back, you say, that dirty Indian shot me when I wasn't looking. We didn't expect him to send you a note, did you? That's a hundred, two hundred years ago. We shot arrows into the backs of people. We don't do that. We're educated. Oh, the finesse and intellectualism we have. Now we just drop a bomb on a city and barbecue the whole city. We're civilized, we've cultured. You tell somebody who went up the Amazon, you saw some bones there that maybe are three thousand years old, very brief, three million years old. Go to the government, they'll give you a grant. You can go live like a king, you can hire a yacht. You can go digging in the dirt. You can dig up some bones and come back with them and put them in the Smithsonian Museum and get your name in one of the record books. You can get any subsidy. They subsidized a man recently to go up the Amazon collecting butterflies. They gave him $26,000. They gave some scientists $150,000 to study the mating habits of frogs. Won't that be good news when we get it? The government's interested where we came from. I listen, I use a bad word. It doesn't care a damn where we're going. You can get thousands and thousands of dollars for nonsense. I don't care where we came from. I know where we're going. Everybody, once you go through that door tonight, you're going to a lost eternity or you're going to eternal happiness. As I said the other week when I preached here, I wonder I got back. But anyhow, I've not preached so long tonight. I've got Referee before me. I said these are the most amazing breeds of men. Breed of men. They're called what? Prophets. By the very nature of their calling, of his calling, a prophet is a tragic figure. Because he has his eyes on the majesty and holiness of God and he has his eyes on the corrupt generation that can't be moved except God comes and does some miraculous thing. And he's in torment. He suffers for the people. He suffers with the people. He suffers by the people. These men don't sleep normally. They don't eat normally. They don't think normally. They've enough to contend for materialism. They have no price tag. This man who sees his nation so corrupt, also saw other things. In the 64th chapter he says this, Thy holy cities are a wilderness. Zion is a wilderness. Jerusalem is a desolation. Our holy habitations, our beautiful house of God which our fathers praised in, is burned with fire. Come on now. You claim somehow to be 32nd cousins to Azusa Street, don't you? Where the glory of God came down. And remember again, there is nothing more attractive in the world than fire. Whether it's physical fire or spiritual fire. When the fires were burning in Azusa Street in 1904 when the Holy Ghost came, I remember a man who lived not far from us, a distinguished Church of England minister, though he's a Welshman, a very brilliant man. He sold his property, sold his furniture to get on a boat and go to New York. Discovered when he got to New York, New York is just as far from London as New York is from California. And he had to get a loan to go the rest of the way. When he got there he told me afterwards, 30 years after he told me, he said it was the most amazing thing I've ever been in. God rewrote the record books as it were. The spirit of the living God came. Men that were twisted and perverted and depraved were cleansed and sanctified and filled and anointed and they went out with a profit man from them. I don't know how you pray. I'm very simple. I pray simply. One of my regular prayers in the closet or with my prayer class on a Friday night. Again and again I thank God for the incorruptible Holy Ghost. It doesn't matter if your checkbook is that length, you can't buy a soup of baptism of the Holy Ghost with a billion dollars. All he asked for is brokenness and contrition and emptiness and a recognition of my bankruptcy, a recognition the world is going to hell. The government can't help America. If you're depending on the White House, forget all about it. It's God's house that's going to save America, not the White House. It's not presidents, it's prophets. It's not men full of wisdom, it's men full of the Holy Ghost. This man is weeping, he's groaning. The place where God's glory dwells is empty. I remember in my class the other night that when Jesus came around the shoulder of the hill there and he looked on Jerusalem, he wept. Why did he weep? He's just been whipping the Pharisees. He's going into the temple to whip them again. Why is he weeping? Because once Zacharias stood there. Once the glory of God filled the temple until the priests had to back out, they couldn't stand God's glory. I make a wild guess here, none of us have ever seen God's glory either. If God came and smote us with his eternal glory, with his brilliance, with his majesty, with his holiness in this meeting tonight, we'd be on the floor in five minutes. At the turn of the century, there was a great poet in America, Oliver Wendell Holmes. His father was a deist. He lived at the end of the last century. But Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a hymn, Lord of all beings, throne of fire, thy glory flames from sun and star, center and soul of every sphere, yet to each loving heart how dear. Our midnight is thine, our midnight is thy smile withdrawn. Do you know when God moves his smile from you? Do you go to misery? Do you go to that rotten old TV and watch PTL or something that fuck you up? Come on, you're filled with the Holy Ghost. Why don't you mourn with the Holy Ghost? Why don't you grieve with the Holy Ghost? We want the joy of the Holy Ghost. Who wants the burden of the Holy Ghost? Who wants the grief of the Holy Ghost? People say, I have a prayer language. Do you? I don't know what you mean by that. If you mean praying in tongues, that may go so far. But there's something beyond tongues. There are groanings which cannot be uttered. And they are put only in the heart when the Holy Ghost is cleansed and the man is cleansed of all his ambition, all his selfishness, his self-seeking, his self-worry, his self-pursuit. And God cuts all the flesh. The scripture calls it circumcising the heart. Just like a boy is taken and circumcised, take the superfluous flesh away, and God comes and circumcises the heart and cleanses it, then he indwells it. Listen, if you say, Jesus Christ lives in me, and if you're not, if you can't say that, then you're not saved. We're not saved because we pray the sinner's prayer. There are millions of people in hell who prayed the sinner's prayer and got baptized, and that's all. We need to rediscover the miracle of regeneration. If any man, any man, anywhere, at any time, is in Christ, he is a new creation. His desires have changed, his appetites have changed, his vocabulary has changed, his interests changed. He is a new creation. He's not the old creation, that self that is leaking. He's a new creation. A new heart, a new spirit, a new will, a new desires. That's what Jesus died to make us. But then there's something beyond that. Being born of the Spirit, there's an endowment of the Spirit, an upon-baptism. You can't show me one man who has moved men in history that didn't have a baptism of the Spirit. Okay, go on, quote Mr. Spurgeon. Mr. Spurgeon says, this is the level where the world lives. This is the level where a regenerate or born-again man lives. But he says there's another higher level up there where a man filled and anointed with the Holy Ghost lives. If you say Christ lives in me, he must see through your eyes, he must look through your heart, he must weep through your eyes, he must groan through your spirit. If self has gone off the throne and Christ is there, you'll live a Christ-like life, you'll have Christ-like habits, you'll have Christ-like outlook, you'll have a Christ-like understanding. To be born of the Spirit is the most amazing revolutionary thing in the history of the world. Go back here to Isaiah 6 for a minute. I'm sorry, get me to Isaiah 20, chapter 20. If any of you tonight are ambitious to become a prophet, let me tell you this. The prophet's chair is empty in America. The prophet's chair is empty in England. People call me on the phone, write in letters, come and see me personally. Where is David Wilson? He lives a mile down the road from me. Is he a prophet? He says he isn't. You never find a prophet swaggering. He carries the burden of God, he knows the heart of God, he knows the mind of God, he has the fear of God, he has the love of God. He's consumed with a desire to be consumed by God. He's a total property in his thinking, in his living, in his sleeping, in everything he's a property of God. Let me show you what it's like to be a prophet here in this 20th chapter. I read, let me see from the second, the second verse there. And it says, At the same time spake the Lord to Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saying, Go and arise, and go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so walking naked. Now he did not walk stark naked because God's never interested in that business. He wore a small garment underneath. But for three years, this man of God goes to the Bible school of the Holy Ghost. There were schools of the prophets. The Bible school may make you a preacher, only God can make you a prophet. You can be a preacher and be mediocre, you cannot be a prophet and be mediocre. And prophets are the men who, they're gods in my judgment. A prophet is God's emergency man for a crisis hour. He's a man who no longer lives for time, he lives for eternity, he doesn't live for the visible, he lives for the invisible. He doesn't have any fear of man, he fears only that he may grieve and disappoint his Holy Father who called him to that office. This man has to walk barefooted. Some of us remember, I remember three forty years ago, in America they used to sing marvelous Negro spirituals, they don't sing them anymore. And one of the ones, I got shoes, you got shoes, all God's children got shoes. When the prodigal came home, his father said, put shoes on his feet, he's an embarrassment to me, he's a slave. He's a nobody. And this man has to become a nobody. So many people want projection, they want to be somebody, they want to be seen. God is looking for nobodies. God is looking for men who hide away in a secret place. And this precious man has to stay here for three years, walking barefooted, a sign and a wonder. I won't quote it to you, I'll quote it to you just without reading it. There's a worse thing there in the fourth chapter of Ezekiel. The nation had drifted from God for three hundred and ninety years. Now listen, God is talking to a man, he's not talking to a seraphim, he's talking to a man. And he says to him, you're my prophet, come on Ezekiel, the nation has sinned for three hundred and ninety years. Now he says, you find a corner, find a place and lie on your left side, your left side, for three hundred and ninety days. Cook your food with human excrements. Become the off-scouring. For three hundred and ninety days he can't even turn from his left side to his right. You do that at night on your beauty rest mattress, don't you? You sleep five minutes, oh I can't sleep, over you go and back again and back. God says you stay there on the floor for three hundred and ninety days. And he so loved the will of God, he wears, as it were, the harness of obedience. People come by and scorn it, what do they think he's doing? I say what he's doing, he's listening to God, he's obeying God. He's going to make a mark on the history of that nation, a mark on the history of the world. Some of our men studied on their TV this morning, their big stuff. Five years from now they won't have enough money to run it, in my judgment. Where will they be then when they've no projection? When they don't get showered with letters and gifts and money. If I wrote another beatitude it would be this, blessed is the man who is shut up to God. A man lying on his left side isn't going to see much, is he? He's not going to be distracted by the lovely weather, he's not going to be distracted by the crowds. He's set his will to do the will of God. Be ye thought the biggest idiot in the world, what does he care? Isaiah sees a lost world out there. If he hadn't seen the holiness of God, if he hadn't seen the twisted corruption, if he hadn't seen the nation like a manure heap, because the more he saw God's holiness, the more he saw man's sinfulness, if he hadn't have seen those extremes, he would never have cried as he does later in his book, when he says, O that thou wouldst render heavens and come down. This book of Isaiah, I guess you know that well enough anyhow, it has 66 chapters. And most of the scholars divide the book from chapter 1 to chapter 39, and in that division, chapters 1 to 39, the holiness of God is mentioned 12 times. From chapter 40 to chapter 66, the holiness of God is mentioned 17 times. This man insists on giving us a concept of the holiness of God. Let me suggest to you some nice reading this week, instead of that little thing you read from. Every morning this week, we read the 40th chapter of Isaiah. He shows you this God, the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, sits on the circle of the earth. He counts the stars, he knows them all by name. A contemporary of Wesley wrote a piece of poetry in which he said concerning the stars, that God, he knows the stars, those heavenly flames, he counts their numbers, calls their names. His wisdom's vast and knows no bound, and deeper than our thoughts are drowned. He sees all the nations of the world, he sees all history, history like one drop in a bucket. He's the God of incredible glory, he's the God of incredible majesty. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. Who is the Lord? Well, the Lord is referred to in the 12th chapter of John. Because this person sitting on the throne, I'll mention him tomorrow night in another dimension, this one sitting on the throne is none other than Jesus Christ. And he's described later, you remember, with eyes like a flame of fire, his feet are like burnished brass, his face is like the sun in its strength, his voice is like the sound of many waters, his tongue is a sharp, twedged tongue. That's the Christ and glory he sees there. Well, how do you deal with extreme holiness and see a nation like ours, which is riddled with immorality tonight, which is riddled with venereal disease, which day by day sucks an unborn babe from its mother and puts it down the john? That's civilization, that's modern scholarship without a conscience. We're more drunkens in the nation tonight than ever we've had. We're more people with VV than ever we've had. We're more people imprisoned. We're more people with broken homes. Poor children that don't know the difference, they just live without a daddy or without a mummy for years. And God looks on this misery. What does he do about it? He must do one of two things. He must either send a cleansing wave of revival or burn the nation up. And this precious man stands there. He says, Oh, that thou wouldst render heavens and come down. What we need is not a stronger dollar. What we need is not a bunch of smarter men in politics, for they all go the same way. What we need in America is a divine invasion, is some miracle of God whereby the house of God is so filled with majesty that the lights don't go out for two or three weeks and people out there dare not lust and they dare not drink and they dare not do their devilish work. That's what revival does. Revival isn't a crowded meeting with a good preacher. Revival is an invasion of God interfering in the affairs of men and stopping them before they go and burn in hell forever. I say tonight, we've more lost people than ever in the world. Because we've lost sight of the holiness of God, we've lost sight of the sinfulness of men. We've lost sight of their peril. I have a precious son who's a very outstanding man. Well, it would be, of course, if he were my son. And anyhow, but apart from that, he is in South America. He's a great, wonderful man of God. Went there by faith, has been there twenty-odd years and he still is there. Recently on the phone, he said, Daddy, I was reading a book, listen to this. And he told me about a man who lived over in Maryland. The man had a daughter who was extraordinarily beautiful. But somehow, how strange it is, what opposites are drawn together. She fell in love with a drunk, a drinking, dopey guy. But delighted in how much he smelled of sweat and his hair was long. And he was a horrid sight to look at, but she loved him with a passion and he loved her. The man came home one day to find a note. The wife had left a note and said, I've gone off with the girl. We're going down to Chicago. We'll have to change planes or trains in Chicago. We're going out to the West Coast. And she's going to get married there. Well, the man was in despair. He tried to guard the girl, he tried to instruct the girl, he prayed over the girl, and now she deliberately walks out with a scoundrel, a man who could be no good to her in any shape or form. And she's going to get married to him and settle down? What did he do? Couldn't call the FBI. He got down on his face in his room and he said, God, there's my darling daughter. I prayed for her, I love her. And she's going to meet that scoundrel and marry that scoundrel? And if she should die on the journey? And these are his exact words. He didn't say, my charming, beautiful daughter, if she dies, we'll go to hell. This is what he said. He said, God, I cannot bear to think that my daughter will marry that man and she may die? And if she dies? These were his words. If she dies without God, if she goes to everlasting burnings, I'll be an embarrassment in heaven. I'll leave pools of tears on your golden street because while I'm enjoying the bliss and glory of heaven, a part of me, not my daughter, a part of me will be in hell forever and ever and ever perishing. I guess one of the curses of our modern religion is that people like Mormons and JWs and all the rest of it do not believe in hell. And people say, isn't it awful? We've got neighbors that don't believe in hell. We've got this that don't believe in hell. I'll tell you something. You don't believe in hell either. Theoretically you do. Last night we had a prayer meeting in the room down there in the old tabernacle. It reached peaks. At times it seemed a bit flat, but it reached peaks. There were times of groaning and agony. Do you believe if you, can you really say now sitting there that if you really believe that your children who are on stage are going to everlasting burnings, you wouldn't have been in a prayer meeting? I was raised in the city of Leeds in the center of England. Prior about the time of my birth we had a super criminal there. He was a combination of every kind of wicked man you ever had. Worse than any Al Capone. He robbed banks. He raped women. He led a gang of cutthroats. And he was elusive. The police couldn't get hold of him. And then one day he was brought into court. And the judge said, the jury men, the manager of the jury said that you're being found guilty. You're to hang by your neck until you die. And according to law in England, a man must have three weeks in which to repent and get straightened out. For the last three weeks of his life he was put in solitary confinement. He was guarded night and day. He wasn't given a knife or fork lest he should try to evade the law by suicide. There he was day and night pondering for three weeks all his hideous record of crime. He'd left blood and slaughter and wickedness and he began to have some trouble about it in his thinking. The night before he was to go to the gallows an officer came in and said, Mr. Pease. That was his real name. It's a strange name for such a rebel. Mr. Pease and Charlie Pease said, Yes, I die in the morning at eight o'clock. And you know what? Ho, ho, I'll be here. At eight o'clock the prison governor went in. A prison officer went in. Pierpoint the hangman went in. A doctor went in. And they stood round him and Charlie jumped up and said, So not what? And then came the preacher wearing his robe and reading somnolently, half asleep. He's only thirty feet to go through a door and the man stands on the trap door and then they pull a switch and he goes and he falls down there. His neck is jerked out. He dies quicker than being electrocuted. When he got about ten feet from the door away that he was going to go through the preacher was reading about heaven and about hell about everlasting bliss about streets of gold. And then he came to something else. And as he did, Charlie Pease reached out and grabbed him and spun him round and said, What are you reading? The frightened preacher said, I'm reading from a book. It's called The Consolations of Religion. Charlie sneered and said, Consolations of Religion. Listen, preacher. Minutes ago you were preaching about the hell. You said you go falling forever and ever and ever and never reach the bottom. You said that hell is a fire where you burn forever and ever. You never consume. You said that hell is dying and never dying. It's the icy fingers of death round your throat and you never die. It may take a billion years but you'll be in the grip of death and never have the relief death brings. He said, Preacher, tell me this. Do you believe what you just read? When I get off the end of that rope and fall, will something go out of me and go on fall forever and ever and ever and ever? Will I be burning forever and ever and ever and ever? Will I be dying and not have any relief whoever I call to? Because remember this, friend. If you won't pray now, you'll pray in hell. I've got scripture for it. A man in hell prayed. He prayed from the wrong place. He prayed to the wrong person. He prayed to Father Abraham. He prayed about the wrong things and he got the wrong answer. Oh yes, people pray. I've no record of anybody praying in heaven except Jesus Christ. He's been praying there for 2,000 years for the church. The preacher looked at Charlie Peace and Charlie's angry. Preacher, he said, if I believe what you and the Church of Jesus Christ say you believe, you could cover England with broken glass from that coast to that, which is from Liverpool to Hull. It's only about 130 miles. You could cover England with broken glass and force me to my knees and make me crawl over the nation leaving a trail from my hands that were torn, leaving a trail of blood from my veins which had been lacerated. I would gladly walk, crawl from Liverpool to Hull on my hands and knees to rescue one other man from hell. And when I got in a dying, exhausted condition into Hull, I would say, Charlie, you did well. You not only saved yourself, you saved another man from eternal misery. Are you going to tell me that the average believer, whether he's a Pentecostal or Presbyterian, Methodist or Mennonite, that we believe in an eternal hell where there's a million roads in and no road out? Where they sing only one song, the harvest is past, the summer is ended and we're not saved? What in God's name does it take to move us? You can't find a man who's moved this nation to God. You can take Finn, if you like, one of the greatest men who ever walked, as far as I'm concerned. You can take a humble shoe salesman like B.L. Moody that God got hold of. He had no scholarship. He sat in a meeting one night where, I forgot the name of the man, Harvest, that somebody was preaching. And that man just threw out a statement which wasn't true anyhow. But he said, the world has yet to see what God can do through one man who has totally emptied himself and filled with God. And the little guy there that usually sat all day selling shoes, as he heard the preacher say that, he said, by the grace of God, I'll be that man. He came to England. They scorned him. They said he murdered his English. He said Daniel in one syllable, Daniel. He said Jerusalem in one syllable, Jerusalem, he said. But there came a time when the Queen of England asked him to come to Buckingham Palace and have lunch. How in the world do you fill an auditorium, the largest auditorium in England? He didn't have some of these raggling kids, you know. He didn't have some hot band that sings. Do you know the poor guy only had God. Isn't it shocking? That's all he had. He didn't have a finance committee behind him. He didn't have an organization running ahead of him. He didn't have big streamers in the newspapers. He didn't have TV. He had God upon him. And people went in their tens of thousands to hear that man. Because God the Holy Ghost was upon him. But listen, one of the outstanding things, he preached on hell at least once in every crusade he had. I don't know if anybody on TV would preach hell to death, unless it's Stragan, he might. And I respect that man very highly. We had lunch with him, Brother Tommy and Patty and my dear wife and I had lunch with him a few weeks ago. I told him how much I enjoyed his preaching. I told him, I said, your singing doesn't attract me too much. That was a bad shot, wasn't it? It was a low shot. He's right across the table. I mean, he could have thrown the water on me, he didn't, but that's all right. I said, you know, your preaching isn't the best I've ever heard in my life. What moves me is you can weep and you're not ashamed to weep on TV about lost men and women. The greatest of English preachers maybe ever was George Whitfield. And he said, when I see a congregation, I don't see the back of the building, I see the flames of hell ready to consume them when they step out there, many of them having rejected God. How do you get vision? I'll tell you. Put some old ragged clothes on one night and go down into Dallas and get around those prostitutes on back streets and those criminals and jailbirds. Ask the police where the worst people are. You talk about sense. Do you know what we do for big crusades? We send hundreds of buses from the First Baptist, the Second Baptist and the 101st Baptist and the 101st Methodist. We send church members to Billy Graham's meetings. By the thousand. We don't stop at street corners and pick up the prostitutes. We don't go to the jailbirds. We don't go to the taverns. We don't rescue the perishing and care for the dying. We go so that the people can string the feathers up a bit and hear some nice singing and hear some broken down film stars that got saved so they'd jump on the bandwagon and sing in big meetings or broken down footballers. But God loves lost men. God loves the unclean. God loves the poor. God loves the destitute. God loves those who look with suspicion on the churches because they see no glory. They see no power. They see no lives revolutionized. They live in an office with an executive who's a big shop deacon somewhere but he's mean. He's scandalous. He'll tell an off-color joke now and again. But what God wants to do is get some holy people and I say again the greatest miracle and I've seen God do wonderful miracles physically but the greatest miracle that God can do is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world make that unholy man holy put him back in an unholy world and keep him holy. And he can do it. And he does do it. And he is doing it. And he will do it. The lostness of men. I need to see the holiness of God. I'm going to speak on worship Tuesday night I think. It's the most unusual exercise in the life of individuals. I have preached. I've prayed. I've planned. And I've written books about revival and about prayer for 60 years. I've discovered there's something greater than prayer. And that's worship. I'll tell you about it Tuesday night. I need a vision of a holy God. I need a vision of a broken lost world. Men that get that vision and get the holy compassion of God in their heart change history. They write history. They don't read church history. They make church history. I didn't know William Booth. I believe I saw him once when I was a little boy. He died in 1912 actually. I knew a man that lived with him for years and he told me about that awesome man. I knew his daughter, the mother, very well. Boy, you talk about holy ghost revival? There's a place in London which is now a theatre. At that time it was a hall you could rent. William Booth rented it. It was packed with about 2,000 people. And men would sit on the back seats there. They were under such conviction of sin they'd take their handbooks and have no hardbacks. And they'd get so nervous that they'd shred their handbooks and you could see where they'd been sitting. The same thing happened in the Irish revival. I'd talk with W.P. Nicholson about revival there.